The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  The next morning, a Flemish merchant came over the passes behind us. He sent a pair of his men-at-arms to negotiate with Sterz, who charged tolls like a lord, of course.

  Perkin led one of the patrols, and told me that evening that the merchant had 200 mules loaded with wool – a fortune – and another 100 loaded with goods meant for us.

  ‘Good English wool – undyed and white as virtue.’ He laughed. ‘And all the things we need: thread, bronze kettles, tin bottles, wool cloaks.’ He showed me his new water bottle.

  The next day, the merchant opened a small fair in Romagnano. Now that we were back at our base in the Count of Savoy’s lands, I wondered how he was doing in his negotiations with the Pope.

  I was slipping away from the life of a donat, and becoming an officer in a mercenary company.

  At any rate, 2,000 lances of soldiers is a fair number of customers, and this man’s company had many things we wanted – razors, for one. Cups, Flemish cloaks, goatskin boots, pewter chargers.

  His wool shipment was for the dyers of Florence, but fashions spring up very quickly among soldiers. Andrew Belmont, who was a devilishly handsome fellow, bought three cloth yards of white wool and a tailor threw him off a fine surcoat in an hour – it didn’t have to be lined, of course, because he wore it over his armour. The wool was beautiful and warm. A dozen of us saw him in his fine surcoat that evening – and laughed when he spilled red wine on it – and in the morning there were fifty of us, me included, in white surcoats. Three days after the Fleming arrived, he’d sold 4,000 cloth yards of his fine white wool.

  Most soldiers can sew. I made my own coat; I hung my breast and backplate on a cross of wood and tailored the wool, coached by Perkin, who was working his own and teaching Fiore, while Juan emulated him from afar while pretending he wasn’t involved. We had to send a boy to buy shears – from the Fleming.

  I dagged my sleeves. Hah! There was a rumour that Sir John Hawkwood had been an apprentice tailor in London – not true, on my honour – but we had some tailors, and they taught us, so we were all popinjays.

  At any rate, we were still retreating – very slowly – before von Landau’s advance. But the same day the Fleming arrived, Sterz told the Milanese envoys that he saw no further point in their sending spies to his camp dressed as heralds – a mortal insult, even though the honest truth. And our German challenged their German to a contest of arms. He offered to meet von Landau on horse or foot, with lances, spears or swords – man to man, twenty against twenty, a hundred against a hundred, or army to army.

  The very next morning, Konrad von Landau led his 12,000 men across two small streams and formed in close order by the castle of Canturino. We rode down the opposite ridge.

  We were formed in six divisions and mine was commanded by Sir John. I had fifteen lances on the right flank of the centre battle.

  I have some things to say that might matter to your account.

  I was wearing the best armour I’d ever worn into a fight, and I was with better men then I’d ever had around me, except at Poitiers, and I didn’t know anything, then. I trusted the men on my right and my left; I trusted the man leading my battle, and I trusted the man leading the battle to the left and to the right. I trusted Albert Sterz.

  I ate well the night before the fight, the week before and the month before and, in fact, most of the year before. I was in the best physical state of my life, and I had slept well. I prayed, and was shriven by a priest.

  I had changed. The order had changed me. But at the same time, the whole world of the companies had changed. These men around me were not routiers. Like me, some had been, but in Italy, they were professional soldiers, and war was about to become an entirely different affair.

  When you ride at the enemy on a good horse, in good armour, surrounded by your friends and well rested and fed – truly, lads, you have to be a coward to fight badly. Or a fool, which may be the same.

  We were all afraid – the Germans outnumbered us – but not with a fear that paralyses, but with a fear that pushes you to strive harder.

  We stared at each other across the stream for half an hour.

  Sterz rode down our front. ‘Dismount!’ he called. We dismounted in a orderly way – the pages came forward, took the archers’ horses first, then the knights’ chargers, and there was, I confess, a moment of chaos as every man sought his place in the ranks. Then, like a sword going home in the scabbard, we were set, with only a few unhandy sods still pushing.

  Front rank: knights and men-at-arms.

  Second rank: armoured squires and pages.

  Third rank: archers.

  Fourth rank: men with less armour.

  In my lance, I stood in front, armed cap-a-pied. Behind me stood a new man, Richard Grimlace, both of us with heavy-headed seven-foot spears. Then Sam Bibbo. Then Arnaud, in a good jack and brigantine, with a second quiver of arrows for Sam and a spear and a sword and buckler, a basinet on his head. We had 2,000 of these little units.

  Sir John stayed mounted, and so did Sterz, Belmont and a few other officers.

  Sterz trotted to our front and waved his baton. ‘Front!’ he roared. ‘Let’s go!’

  We moved forward to the very edge of the stream.

  It was fairly full of ice-cold water, and I remember staring down into the depths of the stream at my feet. It was, of course, a mountain stream, filling its stone banks to the brim.

  There was a trout in it.

  The old Romans lived by signs – animals, birds – I was reading Ovid by then.

  That trout made me absurdly happy.

  ‘Ready!’ called Sterz.

  All along the third rank, the archers nocked arrows. Heavy, quarter-pounder war-bow arrows.

  Opposite us, the Germans were 100 paces away, sitting on their horses, listening to a trio of Germans address them.

  I had a long look at the Hungarians. They were moving; their horses fidgeted.

  I pointed them out to Sir John, who was sitting on his charger just behind Arnaud.

  ‘They’re not happy and they haven’t been paid,’ Sir John said with infinite satisfaction. ‘Watch and learn, William the Cook.’

  ‘Draw!’ called Sam Bibbo at my back. No one had named him master archer, but archers aren’t men-at-arms: they have strange, craftsmanlike notions of leadership. Sam was widely held to be the best bow, and that made him master archer.

  When you see 2,000 war bows bent in earnest, it stops your heart. The white bows go down, swooping like hawks, then they rise as the archers bend them, like a great flock of birds turning and rising together, and at the top of their flight—

  ‘And loose!’

  Two thousand shafts, loosed in the same breath.

  They make a noise, like 100 nuns whispering at Mass.

  ‘Nock!’ Sam roared.

  ‘Draw! And loose!’

  There were horses down all along the German ranks, and a few men. Germans don’t bard their horses like the French do.

  Because unlike the French, they don’t fight us.

  Horses scream.

  ‘Nock!’ Sam screamed. He was out of practice and his voice broke a little.

  ‘Draw! And loose!’ Another 500 pounds of steel and wood went off to meet the Germans. Every war arrow weighs almost a quarter of a London pound.

  The trio of German officers were yelling at the top of their lungs – you could tell that from their posture. As I watched, one took a clothyard of ash under his arm, right through his body, and fell.

  ‘Nock!’ Sam called.

  ‘Draw!’ The only noise from the English was the muscular grunt of 2,000 men drawing their great bows together.

  ‘Loose!’

  The Hungarians broke.

  They turned and ran, their small, swift horses carrying them clear of the arrow fall. They were led by knights, who wavered longer, but the mounted archers were gone in as long as it takes to tell the story.

  All 3,000 of them.

  Sterz held up his baton.
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  Fingers reaching for shafts stopped, paused and reached instead for swords.

  ‘Forward!’ he called.

  By the sweet and gentle Christ, my friends, and by all the saints, that water was cold. And it came to my hips. Ice water to your balls!

  Every one of us gasped as we hit that water. It filled my sabatons, my greaves and my clothes.

  But 8,000 men can break the force of any stream. It was six paces across, and our front was well dressed – that is, we were all level with each other. Back then, we never practised any such thing – then we were scrambing up the far bank. Men grabbed bushes and trees – it was a three-foot climb out of the icy torrent – men behind pushed.

  Then we were up, and it felt as if I could reach out and touch the Germans.

  Even then, I thought the Germans would charge and make a fight of it.

  Konrad von Landau rode to the front and called something in German. I don’t know what he was saying, but he sounded like he was saying, ‘Stand! Stand!’

  They were melting away.

  We formed and we did it quickly – we’re not the Legions of Heaven, or Old Romans, but we were a company and we had spirit. Then we started forward, spears held two-handed. The closer we got to the Germans, the faster we were going. Men stumbled and fell – I remember that field, and it looked as smooth as a tile in a Flemish bath, but it was covered with fist-sized rocks, left by the glaciers, and if you got one under your heel, down you went.

  As is often the way, everything suddenly happened at once.

  The Germans nearest von Landau charged, but they’d waited far too long, and we were closer than twenty paces, and their horses were unsure from their first steps whether to face our spears or not. Others among the Germans were running, or sitting where they were.

  I’m going to guess they didn’t trust the men to their right and left.

  Fiore was three men to my left. I heard him say, quite distinctly, ‘But we won’t get to fight at all!’

  The Germans came at us, but their horse flinched, and we charged into them rather than the other way round.

  I hadn’t faced another man in combat for a year – almost to a day.

  I punched my spear into the armpit of the first German I met. He raised his sword to cut at me, and down he went, over the cantle of his saddle. I had to push past his horse to go on – the horse just stood its ground like an equine statue; I’ve never seen the like.

  I remember the next man because I took him for ransom. He had a lance, which he endeavoured to use against me with both hands. I slammed it to earth with my spear and returned his stroke with a blow to his aventail, rocked him in the saddle and stabbed him three times in as many heartbeats. Each blow turned by his breastplate, but I had practised this at the pell – my point was looking for a weak joint and he couldn’t shake me.

  My fourth blow popped his visor and went into his helmet – by an odd twist of luck and armouring, it went over his head, between his head and the padding of his helmet. So instead of instant death, it stretched his spine and gaffed him from the saddle as his horse tried to turn, so that he was on his back. By ill luck, he hit one of the small stones and was knocked unconscious.

  Or perhaps it was good luck. He lived.

  My third German knight was trying to run. I killed his horse from behind, and left him for Robert or Arnaud. They took him.

  I was now deep into the German lines and the battle was over. The Germans were running, except for a band of perhaps 100, gathered around their great knight, von Landau, and they were facing Sir John’s men – and mine. I left off pursuing stragglers and ran at the rear of von Landaus’s stand. Of course he didn’t want to be taken, and he was still calling on his men to stand and not run. The English no longer had any order – everyone was going in all directions, looking for men to take and ransom.

  War between mercenaries can be formulaic, but battle is always chaos and death.

  The knot around von Landau grew smaller and smaller; it was very like the end at Poitiers. I faced a Milanese knight in superb armour, and he beat my spear aside with his sword; I caught his sword on my spear haft, and he cut into it, once, twice, and then the spear broke. I threw the shards at his horse to make it shy and drew my longsword. He came at me again, the horse pressing against me, so I dropped and went under the horse – got a nasty knock from the beast – and came up under his stirrup. I cut into the unarmoured back of his thigh and he yelled. Kenneth, the Irishman, got his other leg and pulled him out of his stirrups. He screamed – that must have pulled every muscle in his hips – and then he was dead, with Seamus’s great axe through his head.

  Waste of a ransom, in my opinion, but the Irish are mad.

  I was one horse from von Landau. If I could kill him or take him, someone would knight me – I could feel it and it was all I wanted.

  He was sword to sword with Fiore.

  He hammered the man on foot, and Fiore covered himself, so that he seemed to live in a tent of steel – every blow fell like a hammer only to trail away. Some fell so hard on Fiore’s sword that sparks flew in broad daylight. Blow after blow.

  It is not done, even among mercenaries, to interrupt a fair fight between peers. So even though von Landau was mounted and a famous name, no one came forward to gut his horse.

  Landau urged his mount into the Italian.

  I prepared to put him down. But I’d have to do it in single combat, and I didn’t want Fiore to die just so I could get my spurs.

  Fiore’s sword took another hammer blow and snapped.

  He ducked under Landau’s next blow, fell to one knee and picked up one of the fist-sized rocks.

  As Landau’s sword went back, Fiore threw. The stone hit just above the mercenary captain’s open visor, and Landau fell as his horse reared.

  He hit the ground stone dead.

  Hah! True as the gospel, messieurs. It’s in Villani! The best swordsman who ever lived killed Konrad von Landau with a rock.

  That night, we were in a clean inn in Romagnano – not in a camp or a muddy tent, nor lying on the ground. I rather liked war in Italy, so far.

  I was sitting at a decent oak table, drinking good wine.

  Fiore and Juan were refighting the battle with Perkin and Robert, who’d managed to get his arm broken but was nonetheless in fine spirits because he’d picked up all my prisoners and made himself enough florins to buy a good horse and become a man-at-arms.

  A Swiss girl with the face of a London urchin and the manners of a fine lady was hovering around, fussing over him. Smart lass. Tend a man when he’s sick or wounded and you own him.

  ‘Now you’ve seen a battle,’ I said, only partly in jest. ‘Does it affect your theories?’

  He rocked his head back and forth. ‘I killed an armoured knight with a rock,’ he said. He sounded disappointed.

  There was something in the way he said it – a combination of pride at having done it, wistfulness at having missed the ransom and annoyance at God’s plan for having to use a rock and not a weapon requiring more skill – that made me burst out laughing, and all the others followed suit. The laughter spread, as laughter does – one man told another, one girl whispered and giggled, and the inn rafters rang with it.

  He frowned for a moment, and then he had the grace to laugh with us, though I swear to you he didn’t know why. Maestro Fiore, as we know him now, was not without humour, but in some ways he lived with the gods, not with mere men.

  For example, he’d killed the enemy commander, he was young, exceptionally fit and rather handsome; he was the hero of the hour. He was, quite literally, surrounded by attractive young women – English, Italian, German, Swiss and Provençal. He did look at them from time to time, but I don’t think he had any idea how to proceed beyond that.

  I’m losing the thread here. We were laughing; he was laughing. And then, through the crowd of camp followers, came a young man. The pretty blonde girl I had been eyeing near the door suddenly flinched aside as she looked at t
he new man; her nose wrinkled in distaste.

  The man had short, dark hair cut in the latest Italian fashion, a sort of bowl cut that went well under a helmet, and he had tight leather boots to the thigh, a neat blue doublet and a matching blue belt with a sheathed dagger – slim and long. He didn’t look like anyone I knew, and my eyes passed over him.

  Another girl glared at him and he glared back, then I knew who he was.

  He was Milady.

  Perkin saw her and shuddered. He knew trouble when he saw it.

  I rose and bowed, and she smiled at me. ‘I couldn’t stay away,’ she said. ‘I gather I missed the battle.’

  Fiore bowed. ‘I haven’t had the pleasure,’ he said. ‘Do you always dress as a man?’

  That was Fiore, too. He watched people in a way that most men do not. He knew she was a woman instantly. Most men didn’t, but many women did.

  She smiled at him and offered her hand, like a woman. ‘I do not dress like a man,’ she said. ‘I become a man, if I want to.’ She tilted a head to one side. ‘I missed you, William Gold.’

  ‘Thanks, Janet.’ I bowed. I hadn’t missed her. Or I had?

  I suspect I wore the same face that Richard wore when he saw me.

  Why, though? She was a good companion, and what I had of gentle manners I owed to her. ‘How’s Richard?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘Well, when I left him.’

  That could mean anything.

  ‘Are you . . . visiting?’ I asked.

  She frowned. ‘No, William. I plan to stay and lead a lance.’ She looked around, daring us to protest.

  Fiore bowed. ‘May I be your squire, Madame?’

  She snapped her fingers. ‘No, messire. I have a lover – I couldn’t possibly satisfy a second. Even in the most chaste and chivalrous way, men are tiresome. Except when you are one, and then men are a delight.’ She looked up and her eyes met his.

  He said, ‘Do you have any skill with the sword?’

  She shrugged expressively. ‘I’m a better jouster,’ she said, ‘but I have been known to use the sword and the dagger.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Fiore. A woman who could use a sword.